Friday, April 27, 2018

Top Five Reasons to Use a Professional

One might think "It's only a passport photo... who cares how bad it is?"

Well, you COULD adopt that attitude about it, but it may actually make difference with a customs agent nowadays. Here are five good reasons to care...

Size... Not all passport photos are created equal. The US passport photo is measured in inches, but all other countries measure theirs in millimeters. Drugstores and travel clubs have difficulty measuring in millimeters and keeping up with all the different sizes required by more than 200 countries.

Background... see above. The US requires white, the UK - gray, and Jamaica is either white, gray, or blue depending on skin tone, clothing and hair color.

Color... a professional studio will use a professional lighting system that is calibrated with their printers. Drug stores often use available light, which changes depending on if the scene is lit with fluorescent lights, tungsten lights, or window light (each producing a different color cast).

Sharpness... using a professional lighting system (as above), your images should be crispy sharp. Using available light at a drugstore, the slower shutter speed required to get a good exposure means there will likely be hand movement by the camera operator.

Experience... a professional photographer makes their living by creating high quality images, whether it's a passport photo or a canvas wall portrait. A drugstore employee may be brand new at the job and by the time he or she has figured out what they're doing, they've either quit, been fired, or even promoted, replaced by another brand new employee.

Bottom line, even though it's "only a passport photo," go to a professional and avoid getting it wrong, wasting precious time and money by having to do it all over again.